WPC: EVANESCENT

(Sounds like something that goes plop-plop! into a glass of water, with following fizzy sound effects afterwards …)

Anyway, onwards and downwards—

No, not mine I’m afraid. I got it from Wiki but it’s just too suiting to our topic. It is, of course, a map.

But it’s a highly contentious map—being the worldview of one Admiral Piri Re’is of old Turkey. If evanescence means transient in time this one fits the bill. If you want to see why it is contentious you’ll have to go there—or read Hapgood’s book “Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings” *

And what can be more evanescent than shame, fame, silly old poops in graveyards with cameras, or even life itself?

I took this (above) with a view to sending it to a Scottish magazine, perhaps it might pique an evanescent interest over there?

NOW HERE’S ONE

more from ol’ Piri. This time snup from his map of Europe, do you see it—?

—if not, look at southern Ireland and track across to the west. I think that’s possibly an interpretation of Brasil Island, aka Hi Brasil … which these days shows up only on nautical charts and things that plumb the depths. How ’bout dat? But then again, in recent wars British MGBs battled it out with German E-boats a hundred feet and more over the heads of the Doggerland farmers tending their fields (but you have to superimpose two evanescent time periods to see it).

Given that the seas rose by 300-400 feet and drowned a lot of islands** that appear/ed on ancient maps, one has to wonder how those clever ancients ‘plumbed the depths’ as it were? Or were they compiling such maps at times contemporary with those islands as islands?

Naaaaah … any scholar worth his stipend and prestige*** would hoot you out of town if you came up with that one!

 

* Contention? Antarctica wasn’t discovered until 1818. (Ol’ Piri drew his map “compiled from many sources, some of them ancient” in 1513 …)

** End of the last ice ages

***  And sinecure …